Approach in the Highest Mode from the Base of the Earth

Above the threshold, the fourth line puts the approach right again. Legge's translation shows its subject advancing in the highest mode and states that there will be no error, while the Little Symbolism gives the whole explanation in a single clause: the subject is in the position appropriate to him. After the hollow advance of the line below, the hexagram recovers not by adding force but by placing the movement where it belongs.

This is the first line of the upper trigram Kun, the receptive earth, and a yielding stroke correctly occupies its even place. It also stands in direct correspondence with the strong first line at the foot of the hexagram, so an approach rising from below finds here a properly seated recipient rather than an obstacle. Fitness of position is the line's entire virtue, and the text asks nothing else of it.

Read across the hexagram, this is where an approach begun in the lower trigram is formally received in the upper. Nothing dramatic is promised; the verdict is simply no error. That restraint is the point. Where the third line reached for effect and gained nothing, the fourth reaches for nothing beyond its own proper station and is faulted with nothing at all.